Whereas for mobile testing, a lot of challenges exist. The mobile market is enormous and diverse, with many devices, inhomogeneous screen sizes, and operating systems, and heterogeneous hardware settings. You cannot test the application on every single device.Device Farm Essentials Various bugs can lurk underneath certain combination of devices, and making your application work seamlessly across all devices is very hard-earned.
This is where device farms come to the rescue. Device farms: Device farms provide access to real devices to test on. In other words, you test your mobile or web apps on hundreds of devices but without buying them; you rent them virtually. Thus, you can maintain the mobile test process to be optimized for it. And so it helps to identify defects early on, and hence improves quality.
Understanding Device Farms,Device Farm Essentials
A device farm is a set of mobile devices for testing applications. This lets developers and testers run their apps on different devices. Simulate the real-world usage and catch problems before your users do.
What are Device Farms and Why We Need Them,Device Farm Essentials
Device farms offer a seamless and controlled testing environment. They assist to make sure that apps can work with various devices and operating systems. Testing on multiple devices allows teams to catch bugs that appear only on specific devices. This again results in a robust and front-end experience.
Physical and Cloud-based Device Farms Device Farm Essentials
Well, there are mainly two types of device farms –
Physical device farms: These include devices owned and maintained by the same team performing the testing. They can be tested directly by testers They can interact with the app by touch, push a few buttons and observe how the app responds. Real world testing comes from physical device farms. These are useful for testing certain features like touch gestures or hardware sensors.However, a real-device farm is costly, and the repair may consume lots of time and resources. It requires space, upkeep, and perpetual updates.
Cloud Device Farms. These farms are accessed via the internet transferring the logic of setup and configuration from your hands to the cloud. These are companies that allow you to control real devices. You deploy your app to the service. It runs your app on devices you select and gives you the results. This is a scalable and low-cost approach. This cuts down on the amount of physical hardware and upkeep required.
Advantages of Using Device Farms to Perform Mobile Testing
Advantages of device farms are quite a few:
More Device Coverage: A pool of devices increases in the way of test coverage.
Saving Money: You can spend less on maintenance and purchasing devices.
Time / Cost saving: Multiple devices testing in one go.
Testing in Realistic Scenario: please avoid emulator and make it on real devices.
Scalable: You can quickly and easily increase or reduce the number of devices in use whenever necessary.
Get Help with Rare Devices: Test on devices that are scarce.
Considerations while choosing a Mobile testing strategy
Planning a mobile testing strategy requires strategic planning.
Choosing Which Devices and OSes You Will Support
Know the devices used most for accessing your site by your target audience. Take market data and user analytics into account. Target the most widely used OS versions and Devices. This guarantees that the majority of users are having a good time through your app.
Real-World Testing Scenario by Workload
Users have different environments and context of using the apps. Test with Real-world Condition Take into account such factors as network speed, battery life, and patterns of use. Tests in conditions such as low signal or in a case where there is no storage It reveals problems that might not show up in controlled circumstances.
Need to find the sweet spot between coverage and efficiency
Not everyone has the luxury to test on every single device. Strike a balance between coverage and speed. Device farmsBuild up coverage without overwhelming your team Rank devices by users and apps, the importance of the app for users.
Device Farm Essentials
Before getting into device farms you need a few things.
System Requirement – Hardware and Software
For physical device farms:
Platforms: Some smartphones and tablets.
Charging Stationings: For powering devices
Network Setup: To ensure devices are connected reliably.
Management Tools: Software to manage and monitor devices
For cloud-based device farms:
A Service Access: Subscription to a cloud device farm.
Integration Tools: API & SDK for your testing framework.
Automation Scripts: Platform runnable tests
How to Establish and Sustain a Device Farm
For physical device farms:
Inventory Management: Keep track of devices and their specifications
Periodic Updates: Ensure devices are updated to the latest versions of the OS.
Secure Your Device: Prevents unauthorized access to your devices.
Maintenance: Fix faulty devices or replace them as per the requirement.
For cloud-based device farms:
Account Management: Create and manage your account.
Test ConfigurationSelect the devices and configure the tests.
Result Analysis: Look into logs and test results
Lessons learned — how to improve your mobile testing strategy
Be it for native, hybrid, or web applications, your mobile testing strategy should be well-optimized. It makes sure that your application would deliver an optimal user experience. Device farms come in handy here. Some suggestions on how you can use them effectively.
Successful Ways To Make Use Of Device Farms
Best Practices for Effective Use of Device Farms
Device Ranking: If someone has 4 different devices, but only always use one of them, target the one always in use. Get familiar with the market trend and the users data. Test on the devices that the majority of your users are using.
Organise your tests: Have specific objectives for each test. Just find out what you want to do with. This boosts your testing productivity.
Automate Judiciously: Automation has reduced a lot of time pertaining to testing but it should be use judiciously. Right after, automate those boring-time expensive product tests Now you would be relatively lower on complexities of testing.
Test Results Tracking: Please be extra careful for the results of the test. Search for patterns and recurring trouble spots. And use this information to improve your app.
Regularly Update : Keep your device farm updated. Incorporate fresh gadgets as they are being sold out. Remove outdated ones. This helps in getting your tests up to date.
Of course, automation is good, but balance has to be maintained between automation and manual testing.
Both automation testing and manual testing have their pros and cons and their right place and time.
Automation Testing
Cons: Speed, efficiency, and consistency! Good for repetitive tasks.
Cons: Lacks human intuition. Potentially overlook UX issues/ User Experience Problems.
Manual Testing
Pros Human perspective Finds usability issues.
Cons: Time-consuming; prone to mistakes
Finding the Balance
Automate the right level of tests: This includes regression testing as well as performance testing
Cloud Testing on Mobile Using Cloud Platfrom
Using cloud-based platforms such as LambdaTest for mobile testing.
LambdaTest is an AI-enabled cloud-based test lab that allows you to evaluate Android and iOS mobile applications. Be it manual tests or automation testing, LambdaTest helps you by providing over 3000+ real devices, browsers and OS combinations at scale, for all your device support, testing needs.
Following are the prominent features of the LambdaTest platform
You get a wide range of actual devices when you use it.Access Your app will be tested on various smartphones and tablets, and this is across a wide range of brands and models. You can also select from among multiple OS versions. This ensures your app is working properly on various devices and platforms.
The Real Device Cloud is one of the most important features. Which gives you access to genuine, real, physical devices hosted on the cloud. You do not have to purchase these devices and maintain it yourself. When you run the tests, you will be able to run it remotely on real hardware, and hence know that results as if you were the physical device in hand.
Automation Testing is yet another vital feature here. There are some popular automation frameworks such as Selenium and Appium which are supported by LambdaTest. That means writing scripts in order to automate your tests as you may need. This process minimizes manual effort and saves a lot of time. It improved the speed and efficiency of your tests.
Live Interactive Testing allows real-time manual testing on remote devices as per your testing needs. You will be able to run your app, test it for usability issues, and observe its functionality. It allows to catch and troubleshoot few issues that are sometimes missed by automation tests.
It also offers integration with tools you may use today such as Jira, GitHub, and Slack. With this, it is super simple to share the test results, log the bugs, and so on communicate with your
Conclusion
You need to optimize the process of mobile testing. This is where remote test labs — or rather, device farms — play a very important role. Along with providing wide range of device coverage, they increases productivity.
LambdaTest is a robust platform for mobile testing. The real device cloud makes it even better for testing. It enables scalability, flexibility and insights at your fingertips.
Do not fall behind in the competitive mobile market. Consider your new testing approach. Think of device farms like LambdaTest. Improve your testing efforts and provide great apps to your users.